Neuroscience
I‘m in Milwaukee for a conference (about which probably more later), and was happy to have the local newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, delivered to my hotel room rather than a bland national paper.
Even better, there is a fascinating animal & cognitive science story on the front page. Decoding Calls of Wild is about Marquette engineering professor Michael Johnson and The Dr. Dolittle Project. The Project's goal is to "...develop a broadly useable framework for pattern analysis and classification of animal vocalizations, by integrating successful models and ideas from the field of speech processing and recognition into bioacoustics."
The Journal-Sentinel describes Johnson's work, saying that the Dolittle project "... has broad applications, from keeping animals happy in captivity to developing a precise census of endangered species from recordings in the wild." Johnson has worked with folks at the National Undersea Research Center of the University of Connecticut; the Journal-Sentinel says that the project "enabled scientists at University of Connecticut to show that beluga whales engage in a human response to noise known as the Lombard effect. Like friends trying to talk over the din at a party, whales raise their voices to be heard over the drone of ships in the St. Lawrence River estuary."
Read more about the project and see a chart explaining how the vocalizations are extracted and classified. Listen to some of the sounds (whales, prairie dogs, and elephants among them) and see audio spectrograms of the sounds at the Journal-Sentinel.
- Spindle Neurons
From the CBC: Humpback whales share brain cells with humans Last Updated: Monday, November 27, 2006 | 1:12 PM ET CBC News Humpback whales have joined an exclusive evolutionary club alongside humans, gorillas and dolphins, thanks to the discovery of a...
- Functional Neuroimaging, Alzheimer Disease, Neuropsychology Function, And The Hippocampus
One of many recent news article over the past year about the application of functional neuroimaging technologies, this time in Wisconsin and with specific concern about the hippocampus and the hippocampal region and its relation to neuropsychological...
- Michael Gazzaniga Now
I've just seen / heard about a couple of interviews with Michael Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience: He was on the Australian radio show All in the Mind in June, and they introduce him as follows: One of the big names of the brain is...
- Talks With Whales
Research News from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Warbling Whales Speak a Language All Their Own “Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form...
- New Link In Animal Behavior
Added 1 cool link to the "Doing Research in Animal Behavior" page. Check out the Animal Diversity Web. This is a database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology. Includes photos and information about both phyla...
Neuroscience
Animal Bioacoustics & Speech Processing
I‘m in Milwaukee for a conference (about which probably more later), and was happy to have the local newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, delivered to my hotel room rather than a bland national paper.
Even better, there is a fascinating animal & cognitive science story on the front page. Decoding Calls of Wild is about Marquette engineering professor Michael Johnson and The Dr. Dolittle Project. The Project's goal is to "...develop a broadly useable framework for pattern analysis and classification of animal vocalizations, by integrating successful models and ideas from the field of speech processing and recognition into bioacoustics."
The Journal-Sentinel describes Johnson's work, saying that the Dolittle project "... has broad applications, from keeping animals happy in captivity to developing a precise census of endangered species from recordings in the wild." Johnson has worked with folks at the National Undersea Research Center of the University of Connecticut; the Journal-Sentinel says that the project "enabled scientists at University of Connecticut to show that beluga whales engage in a human response to noise known as the Lombard effect. Like friends trying to talk over the din at a party, whales raise their voices to be heard over the drone of ships in the St. Lawrence River estuary."
Read more about the project and see a chart explaining how the vocalizations are extracted and classified. Listen to some of the sounds (whales, prairie dogs, and elephants among them) and see audio spectrograms of the sounds at the Journal-Sentinel.
- Spindle Neurons
From the CBC: Humpback whales share brain cells with humans Last Updated: Monday, November 27, 2006 | 1:12 PM ET CBC News Humpback whales have joined an exclusive evolutionary club alongside humans, gorillas and dolphins, thanks to the discovery of a...
- Functional Neuroimaging, Alzheimer Disease, Neuropsychology Function, And The Hippocampus
One of many recent news article over the past year about the application of functional neuroimaging technologies, this time in Wisconsin and with specific concern about the hippocampus and the hippocampal region and its relation to neuropsychological...
- Michael Gazzaniga Now
I've just seen / heard about a couple of interviews with Michael Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience: He was on the Australian radio show All in the Mind in June, and they introduce him as follows: One of the big names of the brain is...
- Talks With Whales
Research News from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Warbling Whales Speak a Language All Their Own “Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form...
- New Link In Animal Behavior
Added 1 cool link to the "Doing Research in Animal Behavior" page. Check out the Animal Diversity Web. This is a database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology. Includes photos and information about both phyla...